This year, as YItzchak Rabin's 24th memorial approached, the Left found a new victim, a new “sacrifice for peace,” Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a professor at Bar-Ilan University and international speaker and writer in defense of Israel.
What was his "crime"?
He dared raise the issue of, “Who killed Yitzhak Rabin?”
The response? How dare he question the accepted amswer!. He must be “disciplined.” If the left were in power, who knows what would have befallen him. Instead, Bar-Ilan University, regarded as a bastion of academic freedom, free speech and free thought, punished him for talking out of turn. His trip to represent the university at an academic conference was canceled.
University Rector Prof. Miriam Faust, actually summoned Dr. Kedar to the Disciplinary Committee, just for saying that he thought convicted assassin Yigal Amir was not actually responsible for the murder of PM Yitzhak Rabin.
Kedar's speech did not take place at the university.
In fact, Kedar spoke recently at a right-wing rally in support of PM Netanyahu. Kedar claimed that Rabin had been the victim of a political conspiracy, and raised the question that Amir was not the real assassin.
“Twenty-four years ago, the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was murdered,” Kedar told the crowd, “and the attempt to hide what happened continues to this day.”
Kedar accused the Left of turning the assassination into a political weapon against the Right for something, “Yigal Amir might not have done”.
“The guilt of the Right continues to this day,” he said. “And how do I know it’s been silenced? For 25 years I was in the Intelligence Corps. I’ve seen tens of thousands of documents that are ‘confidential.’”
“Why [are documents relating to the murder] confidential?” Kedar asked the audience, answering: “Ladies and gentlemen, much of the investigation into Rabin’s murder are still in secret documents to date.”
Kedar continued, “Why is he [Amir] sitting in solitary confinement? So that he won’t tell people the truth?” Kedar then called for a “real investigation of Rabin’s murder.”
According to a poll conducted recently, by the Roshink Research Institute, for those organizing the upcoming Rabin Memorial, 19% of Israelis support a pardon for Yigal Amir, and 18% reported they are unsure whether to pardon him or keep him in jail.
So it seems that some Israelis have their doubts too.
Yet Bar-Ilan University was swift in responding, “The Bar-Ilan University administration strongly condemns Dr. Kedar’s comments. The things he said and his opinions, are his own, and do not represent the university and its employees. We believe that there is no place for these kinds of statements in Israeli society.”
Notice, one is not allowed to question accepted views.
Except for two things:
1. In 2001, Yitzhak Rabin’s grandson during a radio interview, revealed that Leah Rabin (Yitzhak’s wife) had expressed doubts and had questions about Rabin’s murder herself. And, Dalia Rabin-Pelossof (Yitzhak’s daughter) has also expressed this in the past.
If the Rabin family themselves have raised questions, why is Dr. Kedar being burned at the stake?
2. Bar-Ilan University is where the “wild weed” Yigal Amir grew, he was a law student there at the time. Is that why Bar Ilan is over-reacting?
Defending Kedar, attorney Dan Yakir, of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, sent a letter to Bar-Ilan University’s management, “We are very concerned about the University’s decision to invite Dr. Mordechai Kedar to a disciplinary committee, to suspend him from representing the University at conferences abroad, and prevent his participation in an [upcoming] conference as a University Representative.”
Dr. Mordechai Kedar is a PhD, a faculty member in the Department of Arabic at the University and research associate of the BESA Center for Strategic Studies.
Yakir wrote, that Dr. Kedar’s remarks about Prime Minister Rabin’s murder were stated outside the walls of the academic institution and that the lecturer did not purport to represent the university.
“These steps constitute an improper violation of freedom of expression and academic freedom. Therefore, we would like to see to it that the disciplinary discussion to which Dr. Kedar is summoned and the suspension of his participation in overseas conferences be canceled,” Yakir wrote.
Labor-Gesher leader Amir Peretz was quick to condemn Kedar’s remarks. Again capitalizing on the murder, to besmirch all those who opposed the “peace process” in 1995, Peretz said, “Netanyahu and his supporters are again on the balcony in Zion Square. The mouth is Kedar’s mouth, maybe the text too; the atmosphere is Netanyahu’s atmosphere.”
The “Rabin Legacy,” about the “peace that could have been,” is always mentioned at every memorial
Another legacy, however, is that after firing on the Altelana, a ship organized by the Etzel (Irgun Tzvai Leumi opposed to the Hagana) and bringing arms to Israel in 1948, Rabin, commander of the Hagana soldiers on the shore, ordered them to open-fire on defenseless Irgunists in the water fleeing the sinking ship, killing a significant number of them.
Rabin also gave 30,000 machine guns as part of the peace process” to arch terrorist and serial murderer, Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. That led to the Oslo War (the second Intifada), with over 1,500 Jews murdered and thousands more maimed.
In an article on Arutz Sheva today, Dr.Kedar wrote that he wouldn not speak on the subject again but repeated his call for the establishment of a state commission of inquiry into the investigation of Rabin's assassination.
Ariel Natan Pasko, an independent analyst and consultant, has a Master's Degree specializing in International Relations, Political Economy & Policy Analysis. His articles appear regularly on numerous news/views and think-tank websites and in newspapers. His latest articles can also be read on his archive: The Think Tank by Ariel Natan Pasko.